Notices by David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)
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David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Thursday, 05-Jan-2017 02:47:50 UTC 
David Benfell
After due consideration, I have decided to shut down the instance of !gnusocial at https://cybernude.org/ . It's broken and it appears unlikely to be fixable. I'm not happy about this--it's my only means of contact with most of you. But this is broken. And when stuff fails to function properly, I wonder what it's doing other than what it should. Which is to say, it becomes a !security risk.
Contact information is updated here: https://parts-unknown.org/drupal7/content/contacting-david-benfell -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Monday, 14-Nov-2016 01:08:47 UTC
David Benfell
@sklaing we already have been giving fascism a try with the war on the poor and a police state. We seem to like it quite well. -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Wednesday, 09-Nov-2016 10:53:21 UTC
David Benfell
Why Donald Trump won https://disunitedstates.org/?p=9093 -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Oct-2016 05:35:57 UTC
David Benfell
@kat None of us can be competent in all things. That's why there are many of us, so we can each have our own set of talents.
But while we might expect it in a pubescent male, there is clearly something deeply wrong, mentally, with any adult who insists that everything must be done *his* way. One doesn't need a credential to understand this most obvious point.
As for code quality, I rely on others who are programmers qualified to evaluate code quality. And understanding the importance of job 1 on any UNIX or UNIX-like system entails certain obvious conclusions, hence that whatever you have for init must be robust.
I understand lots of people didn't like init scripts. Hell, I don't like init scripts. But it's really, really hard to see how that required writing a whole new init with the worst case of mission creep in programming history, taking on ever more functions.
There are no great mysteries here. And many, many people have raised these objections over a period of many years. -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Oct-2016 04:28:11 UTC
David Benfell
@kat the fuss arises because this is an overly complex and crappily-written init. Job 1 needs to be robust. Systemd can never be robust because it's far too complicated. Nearly as important, Lennart Poettering has about the worst case of narcissism anyone has ever seen in a programmer: Nothing is good enough unless he's rewritten it or piled on layers of bloat atop it. It's extremely troubling that Linux distributions are enabling someone who needs to be taken far, far away from a keyboard and gotten psychiatric help. -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Sunday, 02-Oct-2016 20:10:20 UTC
David Benfell
!selfhost !selfhosting Remember to bow down before our great god Lennart Poettering: https://www.agwa.name/blog/post/how_to_crash_systemd_in_one_tweet -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Saturday, 17-Sep-2016 00:08:34 UTC
David Benfell
If I recall correctly, that was the substance of the defense against the birther allegations until Obama released the long form.
I guess what we'd have to say is that birtherism was always an obsessive--not in any way rational--challenge of Obama's origins, which in my mind, is as convincing a display of racism as one can find. -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Wednesday, 24-Aug-2016 07:59:42 UTC
David Benfell
I don't recognize SWPL.
SPLC is Southern Poverty Law Center: It is authoritative in cataloging right-wing hate groups.
The ADL is the Anti-Defamation League. They're okay on hate groups and Holocaust-deniers, but they're partial towards Israel against Palestine. -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Friday, 19-Aug-2016 20:37:43 UTC
David Benfell
Here's a creation myth I can go with.... https://cybernude.org/attachment/26402 -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Saturday, 06-Aug-2016 21:40:27 UTC
David Benfell
A woman is violently arrested. Her crime? Fear of police: Daily Bullshit, August 6, 2016 https://cybernude.org/url/25582 -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Friday, 22-Jul-2016 09:04:03 UTC
David Benfell
There is indeed something degrading about workers relying on tips for income. The trouble is that they *do* rely on tips for income and employers take advantage of the existence of tipping to pay less than a living wage. And to pay a worker less than a living wage is to suggest that they are worth less than their lives which is particularly degrading. @zoowar @lnxw48 @mbjunior -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Monday, 06-Jun-2016 22:19:22 UTC
David Benfell
Marxist Business Consulting (Existential Comics, June 6, 2016):
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/136 https://cybernude.org/attachment/21573 -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Thursday, 07-Apr-2016 18:46:41 UTC
David Benfell
I'm not sure what you mean by "moral rights." Do you mean "natural law" and "natural right" (yes, singular, for reasons that are a mystery to me)? If so, natural law has largely been displaced in favor of written law over a period of centuries, even in the English precedents to the U.S. system. -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Friday, 01-Apr-2016 06:55:09 UTC
David Benfell
@psychonot is right that Sanders is a centrist. According to the political compass, he's a couple notches left of center, but basically yes, nothing he's saying would have been out of the ordinary when I was growing up.
When you speak of a "free market," you should define whom it would be "free" for. And if you imagine it would be "free" for everyone, you should explain how it can possibly be so given any inequality in the ability of any participant to say no. If you claim that capitalism does not equal "free markets" then you need also to define what you mean by capitalism.
@taknamay the only definition I've found for socialism involves centralized authority. I found it in Hayek, who makes pretty clear what he wants to avoid. No, I certainly never saw this properly explained in school. -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Friday, 25-Mar-2016 11:39:33 UTC
David Benfell
The great lesson of Marx and Lenin is that one cannot achieve an anti-authoritarian objective through authoritarian means. (Too bad they didn't listen to Bakunin.) Parecon repeats the Marxist-Leninist mistake. -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Friday, 25-Mar-2016 04:10:13 UTC
David Benfell
@mcscx the U.S. has its voting system for a reason and it's not the reason we teach children in Civics classes. @arashm
https://disunitedstates.org/?p=8743 -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Monday, 21-Mar-2016 04:56:28 UTC
David Benfell
So, to actually answer your point, what happens is that what I call 'true' capitalism aligns with authoritarianism and what I call 'true' communism aligns with anarchism. You can have authoritarian socialism, e.g. Lenin and lots of so-called 'communist' but really socialist (centrally-planned) societies, but just as Mikhail Bakunin predicted a long time ago, you can't get to an anarchist society by authoritarian means. You can try for capitalist libertarianism, but then your system of exchange privileges whomever is most able to say no, just as Max Weber pointed out something like a century ago. And it turns out that very few capitalist libertarians are all that libertarian on the Political Compass. -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Sunday, 20-Mar-2016 04:41:57 UTC
David Benfell
I think not. https://c4ss.org/ -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Monday, 29-Feb-2016 04:44:17 UTC
David Benfell
@mangolazi , there was also Walter Mondale in 1984 who, if I understand correctly, lost in an even larger landslide to Ronald Reagan (the latter was incumbent). But between McGovern in 1972 and Mondale in 1984, the faux liberals who now control the Democratic Party reckon they have justification for adopting ever further right-leaning and authoritarian-leaning positions. This is an example of how the two-party system constrains the range of acceptable political discourse, since any position outside the range embraced by two overwhelmingly dominant parties may be diminished as impractical.
There's no question that Sanders has a very steep hill to climb. And if you look at the political compass chart I've attached of the 2016 candidates, you'll see why the Democratic establishment, even if it were not already bent on Clinton's coronation, would be determined to suppress Sanders' candidacy.
https://disunitedstates.org/?p=8785
@cmhobbs @geniusmusing@federati.net @lnxw48 https://cybernude.org/attachment/12494 -
David Benfell (benfell@cybernude.org)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Feb-2016 00:07:04 UTC
David Benfell
It arrived and is hanging on a wall well protected from direct sunlight. The good news is it has the old seal rather than that gawd-awful new logo. The bad news is that it bears the signature of an Ed.D. who is almost certainly destroying Saybrook University and who has drastically changed it from what it was. https://cybernude.org/attachment/10960
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